Activate Your Practice Podcast
The Activate Your Practice Podcast is hosted by the Chairman & Founder of Activator Methods, Dr. Arlan Fuhr. This podcast will cover a variety of subjects. Dr. Fuhr will interview guests from different backgrounds and professions, as well as talk about his 50+ years in chiropractic care.
Activate Your Practice Podcast
Empowering Chiropractors: Business Strategies and Legal Insights from Dr. Ray Foxworth
Can a simple pen change your life? Join us for an enlightening conversation with Dr. Ray Foxworth, the visionary CEO and founder of ChiroHealth USA, as he shares his remarkable journey from a chance encounter to becoming a pioneering leader in chiropractic. Hear the heartfelt story of his mother’s financial struggles and how it sparked his mission to uplift the chiropractic profession. Dr. Foxworth provides a comprehensive look at the evolution of chiropractic since 1985, touching on critical changes like legal reforms, improved reimbursement models, and the drive towards greater integration within the healthcare system. His insights reveal the indispensable value of business acumen and proactive community engagement for chiropractors.
Stepping outside comfort zones can lead to extraordinary success, as Dr. Foxworth’s personal experiences vividly demonstrate. Discover how a motivational message from his daughter and the wisdom of Zig Ziglar catalyzed his achievements. Through compelling anecdotes, he emphasizes the dual roles of chiropractors as both practitioners and businesspeople and the profound impact of legally established cash practices. Our discussion is filled with mutual respect and admiration, offering valuable lessons for anyone eager to understand the keys to chiropractic success and transformation. Tune in and be inspired to embrace opportunities and support others on your path to growth.
Hello, I'm Dr Arlen Foer, the chairman and founder of Activator Methods International, and today we're bringing you Activate your Practice from Las Vegas, nevada, at the Parker Seminar, which allows me to interview some people that would be difficult to get a hold of. And our interviewee today is Dr Ray Foxworth, the CEO and founder of ChiroHealth USA, and welcome to the program, ray.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, Roland. I appreciate the opportunity.
Speaker 1:What I'd like to ask you is what got you into chiropractic to start with?
Speaker 2:It was strictly by chance. I often say I didn't choose chiropractic, it chose me. It had nothing to do with the fact that my mother and father were both chiropractors. Growing up, I never, ever even thought about following in their footsteps. That's just what my parents did. And I happened to go to one of the state association meetings.
Speaker 2:I was in junior college, in a pre-med program back at that time, and I heard Sig Miller speak, and the longer I heard him talk, it's like, even though you're the kid of a chiropractor, you don't understand. You don't have the full depth of understanding of chiropractic, and sig really did a great job in explaining chiropractic in a way I hadn't heard before. And um, that's when I decided I want to go to chiropractic college and I'll never forget I. I went to my folks house probably about a week later and I said I think I want to go to chiropractic college. And they're going.
Speaker 2:What? Because they never really pushed me or encouraged me. Had they done that, I probably wouldn't have. But I remember my dad saying well, you've thought about it for a week now. Have you saved up any money? And I opened my wallet and I said, yeah, I got $14. And literally within, you know, there's the power of the made up mind. Literally in three weeks we packed up our Datsun B210, with my wife and son at the time, and moved to Kansas City and never looked back.
Speaker 1:Interesting. What drives you to improve the profession?
Speaker 2:A very personal story and I'll try not to be tearful, but I often am when I tell this story. My mom divorced my dad. All she ever did was work either as a chiropractor's assistant and then became a chiropractor, and when she opened her practice in Yazoo City, mississippi, home of Zig Ziglar, it was a struggle, a horrible struggle, and I'll never forget. As I tell the story, one night my mom's practice was in the front of the house. Me and my two sisters and mom lived in the back of the house, shared the same room for bedrooms, and I heard my mom crying and my sister, nancy, says, mom, what's wrong? And she said, honey, we're down to our last 37 cents and I don't know where the next new patient's coming from, and so I didn't realize the impact that had on me at that time.
Speaker 2:But I never, ever want to see another chiropractor ever have to go through anything like that, and so my part of my purpose, cause and passion is to try to elevate the profession. Have us compensated fairly, just not not be. It's a shame that someone who chooses a healthcare profession as powerful as chiropractic would ever be in that situation, and unfortunately, a lot of doctors do struggle because, as I've said recently, they're in practice but they're not in business and they've got to understand how good of a chiropractor you are. If you're not cash flow positive, if you're not making money, you can't serve people.
Speaker 1:What's changed since 1985?
Speaker 2:Oh boy, when I got licensed in 85 in our state well, keep in mind, we're the second to last state to even be licensed so when I came to the state, we couldn't draw blood, we couldn't do nutrition, we couldn't use therapies, just a lot of limitations. The medical association in the state at the time clearly was very controlling, like they are in a lot of states, but it was actually in our scope of practice law, in our law itself.
Speaker 2:It said nothing in this act shall permit a chiropractor to be reimbursed under workers' comp or personal injury. That was the law. That was in the law. Yeah, so fast forward. When I got to the state, quite frankly I was pissed off at the state of affairs and I started showing up and getting involved and and um, I tell folks I've lived the chiropractic dream. We went from where I was with my mother in that experience to literally within 20 years. Um, because I did show up and I did say yes and I got outside of the four walls of my practice and way out of my comfort zone. You know, I saw things. Well, we got the workers comp thing turned around by a Supreme Court case. We got reimbursed by personal injury.
Speaker 2:Probably one of the biggest things is I'll tell a short story I would request x-rays from a hospital, from another doctor's office, and they would tell you well, we don't share x-rays with, we don't work with, chiropractors. So, being young and having parents who never told me there was something I couldn't do, I said I'm going to change this and I had some goals. I wanted to be on staff at a hospital, I wanted to be involved in healthcare bigger than chiropractic, and so I wrote this is on the heels of the Wilk case. You remember all the organizations in medicine that had to publish that they were guilty of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act. Well, I had all of those statements from all of those different entities in medicine. I wrote an 11-page letter, Okay, and sent it to over 500 MDs in our town and I got a couple of calls back from them saying I don't know who you are, but don't you ever send me anything again. I said, okay, you're off the Christmas list. But literally within a couple of days' time, I had a couple of calls from orthopedics and family practice docs. Because what I did in the letter I said here's who I am, here's my background, here's my training, here's who I am, here's my background, here's my training, here's when you ought to consider referring to a chiropractor and here's when you should never refer to a chiropractor. And literally within a matter of weeks' time, I got invited to speak to an orthopedic group at River Oaks Hospital. Fast forward, I got invited to speak at University Medical Center to the Department of Neurosurgery anesthesiology.
Speaker 2:Ultimately, I ended up being appointed to the State Board of Health, first chiropractor ever on the Board of Health. All hell broke loose, as you can well imagine. Yes, give you a little backstory on that. When I left the Board of Health after 12 years, I was given a book by the state health officer it was from 1913. And it was a letter to all the district health offices to send in copies of ads and report the names of people that were practicing chiropractic, because their intent was to try to round them up Excuse me, it was 1933. And so you know, seeing that it was just amazing to go from that kind of attitude toward the profession to actually I ended up being chairman of the State Board of Health for two years.
Speaker 2:And then, probably the next biggest thing is because I was involving myself in things outside of chiropractic side of chiropractic. I was on the workers' comp physician advisory committee and got to meet a lot of orthopedics and physical medicine and rehab docs. And I'll never forget. I got the call from my buddy, raul Vora, and he said we're going to build a spine center and we want you to be a part of it. And I'm going like, wow, I don't have the pockets for that.
Speaker 2:Little did. I know that the others didn't either. But my wife said, ray, we don't have the money to do that. I said you just got to believe, you got to show up, and so now my practice. I'm out of practice now. I sold it in 2020. But it's on the campus of New South Neurospine with seven neurosurgeons, orthopedic surgery, physical medicine, rehab, chiropractic, pt. It's got anything to do with the spine. That's in that facility. That's what can happen in one generation if you show up and you say yes, and so that's part of my encouragement to our profession. We sit and complain and gripe about the state of affairs, but we don't get out and do anything about it. We wait on someone else too many times.
Speaker 1:What drove you to start Cairo Health.
Speaker 2:That would be my Miss Jones story. So I was taking care of this family husband, wife, a couple of kids and at that time I'm probably charging, you know, $35, $40 a visit. They had no insurance at all, so I gave them a break on their coverage. Well, fast forward, they were involved in an auto accident and so I billed out my normal fees, which were much higher than the $35 or $40.
Speaker 2:And I come into the room one day and there's Ms Jones and her family there and she just you ever walk into a room and you know something's wrong? Yes, well, something was really wrong. Ever walk into a room and you know something's wrong. Yes, well, something was really wrong. This nice little lady that I've been taking care of for years. I said Ms Jones, you look like something's wrong. She said it is. She said I saw what you billed the insurance company and I know what you were having us pay as cash patients and it's guys like you ripping off the insurance companies that keep us from affording health care.
Speaker 2:And I was speechless for about 10 seconds, which was a long time for me, and I said no, it's guys like me that bend over backwards. I said, but I made a horrible mistake. I never let you know that I was trying to help you or what my actual fees were. She said well, I don't care, I've reported you to your board and to the attorney general. Fortunately, it wasn't against the law in our state to have a dual fee schedule then. But what it made me start thinking about is there is no way that that looks good in the eye of a patient, yes, so I started looking at what are the models out there and I found the discount medical plan plan model, which basically allows doctors to bill higher fees to get paid well and then, when insurance is available, but then have a legal contractual discount for those patients that don't have health insurance or have limited benefits. So it was out of a pain.
Speaker 1:What I call the most painful day in practice turned out to be a great solution and, as I understand it, it was a way to do a legal cash practice.
Speaker 2:It is. And I discourage doctors from saying you know, I'm an all-cash practice, because the reality is we've always, as chiropractors, we love helping our patients and so we bend over backwards to help them. But you've heard that saying no good deed goes unpunished. Yes, well, there are rules and regulations from your board of examiners, from your provider agreements, from the attorney general to the OIG and Medicare, and a lot of those rules conflict. Well, if you use that DMPO, the Discount Medical Plan Organization model, all of that goes away because it's now just another contract that you have. Blue Cross, seton and Cigna don't pay us all the same thing for a 98940. So why can't we do that for our underinsured and limited benefits? You can if you go through a DMPO, which is regulated by the Department of Insurance. So we spent an awful lot of money in getting regulated and we're now in 48 states.
Speaker 1:To me, for a new practitioner, it's an absolute must to have a legal cash practice. Absolutely, and that's what I'm seeing that you've done is to make it legal and follow the law and end up without any trouble.
Speaker 2:That's it. It started out as strictly a response to a problem I had in my office and then, as I talked with other folks, everybody was having this type of issue and, because of my background and some other things I had done, that's really what made me start looking at there's got to be a solution out there and it appears to have been it well, what would you?
Speaker 1:what's your number?
Speaker 2:one piece of advice you'd give other kairos and business owners clearly it would be, as I said earlier, get outside of your comfort zone. In fact, my, my daughter, gave me a little pen that says life begins at the end of your comfort zone and and I I can tell you that, um, all the blessings that I've had and the the ability to do things that, literally in a generation from where my parents were literally for two reasons, I showed up, I said yes, and I was blessed to have parents that never told me there was something I couldn't do, you know, and my other influence is probably I mentioned Zig Ziglar earlier. We live next door to his sister and his two nephews, and so I'd always been a Zig Ziglar fan and I love what he says. You can have anything in life you want if you help enough other people get what they want, and so that's kind of been my focus and that's what I would encourage doctors to do.
Speaker 2:Number one realize you're in practice and in business, and to get outside of your comfort zone. If you're, if you want to build your practice, if you want to impact your, your community, you're not going to do it inside the four walls of your practice and just complaining. Oh, poor pitiful me. You got to get out and get up and go do something.
Speaker 1:Exactly. Well, I can't thank you enough for the interview because you have given the profession a new lease on life, for having the cash practice legally, and I think that's a great contribution. So thank you for today and thank you for taking time. It was a pleasure and I've always admired you, so I just wanted to get you on this cast and I knew at Parker we could find you. Well, I appreciate that the feeling is mutual. Well, thank you very much.
